Healthy baby is born in international waters, just 24 hours after his Nigerian family was rescued from overcrowded boat.
A healthy baby boy has been born to Nigerian parents on board a rescue boat in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea, according to the medical charity Doctors without Boarders (MSF).
Newman Otas was delivered on Monday by an MSF midwife on the MV Aquarius vessel, just 24 hours after his parents Otas and Faith and their two elder sons were rescued from an overcrowded rubber dinghy. It was a normal birth in dangerously abnormal conditions
The Aquarius, hired by MSF and SOS Mediterranean, a civil society group working to rescue at-risk refugees at sea, picked up 392 people on Sunday, including women and small children.
Among those saved, 55 people on board were under 18, with 141 of them traveling alone without a parent or guardian accompanying them. In total, more than 1,100 people were rescued off the coast of Libya on Sunday by Italian coastguard and naval vessels, a British and an Irish warship, and several ships chartered by humanitarian NGOs.
According to Italy's interior ministry, about 124,500 migrants have arrived since the start of 2016, just slightly more than the 122,000 recorded for the whole of last year.
Italy is sheltering growing numbers of would-be refugees as its neighbours to the north move to tighten their borders and make it harder for migrants to travel to their preferred destinations in northern Europe.
According to interior ministry figures released earlier this month, Italy now has 155,000 migrants in reception centres, compared with 103,000 in 2015 and 66,000 in 2014.
